


Unlifestyles of the Rich and Famous

by quantumvelvet



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28234308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet
Summary: Even though she knows he's securely tied to a chair and gagged to keep him from shouting, she has to glance over at the person who decidedly is not  Nick every few minutes to make sure he hasn't...crab-walked into a corner on the ceiling, maybe.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Unlifestyles of the Rich and Famous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [horchata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horchata/gifts).



The girl is radiant. That's Caleb's first thought when he lays eyes on her. Even as dulled as his senses are by the meat he's wearing – honestly, the boy has all the spiritual awareness of a cracked highball glass - she's surrounded by a coruscating nimbus of light, all rose and gold. Their fingers brush when she takes the flowers he's holding out to her, and for a moment it feels like he's dipped his hand into a pot of boiling water. He jerks back, and so does she, dropping the flowers in surprise. She looks down at her fingers for a moment, then utters a chagrined laugh as she bends to retrieve the bouquet. “Sorry,” she says. “Static, I guess.”

She sounds genuine, and he swallows back his reflexive disdain at her ignorance, giving her a charming smile instead. “No harm done.”

She straightens, shaking out her stung fingers, the flowers held in her off hand. “I should get these in some water. Want to come in?”

“I'd be delighted,” he says, allowing the practised smile to widen just a hair.

She gives him an odd look, but turns to lead the way into the house, and the threshold parts like water around his stolen body as he follows. It's almost disappointing – he had been expecting wards, expecting to have to lean heavily on this living guise to get inside her defences. Instead, he's found only a little girl, all raw potential and instinct and no idea whatsoever of what she could become with the right knowledge, the right guidance.

His guidance, he decides. He had come prepared to wrest his stolen prize from the girl by force, but why expend so much effort when he could bring the girl into his shadow? It's a far more difficult thing to bind the living than the dead, and even were his gifts not somewhat muted by this body's deficiencies, he wouldn't be able to force his stamp on her. She must enter into a compact willingly.

It won't be hard to convince her.

She sets the flowers down on the kitchen island, and goes to rummage through the cupboards in search of a vase. There's a young boy in the kitchen – Carlos, the body's memories inform him, grudgingly - spooning cereal into his mouth, and Caleb gives him a brief nod in greeting when he glances up. No power there, not even a whisper of his sister's gifts. Social niceties observed, he dismisses the child, and leans against the island, arms folded and legs crossed at the ankle, to watch the sister.

“What did you think of the show last night?” she asks over her shoulder, then yelps as she nearly pulls the vase she'd been looking for down on her head. What a ridiculous creature, to have so much strength in her.

He waits until she's finished running the water for the flowers to answer. “You were remarkable. I've never seen anything quite like it.” Which is true enough. Not once in all his years has he ever seen anyone able to wrest one of his thralls from him, let alone three at once, and from a distance.

“I'm glad you liked it?” she says, the faint upward lilt to her voice making it a question.

“I would love to meet the rest of your band,” he says, and she gives him an uncertain look.

“They...uh, they're probably too busy right now,” she says. “It's a lot later there. They're halfway around the world.”  
“Of course,” he says, expression growing abstracted as he wrestles with Nick's memories, finally calling forth the girl's excuse for her disappearing bandmates. A clever lie, if an entirely unpolished one. “But could I see where the magic happens? Your studio,” he clarifies, when her expression clouds further.

“Oh,” she says. “Sure.”

“We still need to talk,” the younger brother cuts in abruptly. The girl starts as though she'd forgotten he was there entirely, and when Caleb looks over, the boy is staring at him very intently.

“Later,” the girl says. “I promise. After I show Nick around Mom's studio.”

The boy shoves one last spoonful of cereal into his mouth, and scrambles to his feet. “I'll come with you.”

“No!” Both Caleb and the girl object in unison, then glance at each other in surprise. He ducks his head as though chagrined, willing the body he wears to blush, caught out at attempting to steal some time alone with a pretty girl.

“No,” the girl repeats. “Look, it won't take long, I promise. Then we'll talk.”

“Okay,” the boy says, not bothering to hide the doubt in his voice.

The girl grabs Caleb's wrist, and he makes a conscious effort to suppress his aura. This time, her touch only tingles a little. She tugs at his wrist, leading him from the room, and her brother watches them go, eyes narrowed. Overprotective, in spite of their ages. It's almost charming.

The girl leads him out of the house and to a small freestanding building that he suspects began its life as a storage shed years ago, when the property was originally developed. And there, inside, is his stolen property, lounging on slightly shabby furniture. Luke begins to call a greeting, then stops, frowning slightly when he sees the girl isn't alone. That frown only deepens when Caleb tugs his wrist from her grasp, and interlaces their fingers instead.

He half expects the girl to pull away. He doesn't at all expect her to wheel abruptly and drive her knee into his groin. His knees buckle, and he folds over himself, groaning and retching.

He's been a long time without a body, a long time without feeling anything he doesn't choose to feel. The pain is almost blinding.

He hears the boys' exclamations of dismay, but can't quite process them through the pain. He hears movement, sees shadows. The girl's voice cuts in, shaky and frightened and angry. “--not Nick.”

Hands seize his arms, pulling him upright, and how dare they, how dare they lay hands on him? He lashes out with a whip of power to disrupt the boys' corporeal forms – and feels it glance off the brat manhandling him, violet light flaring briefly, then dissipating again. He's surprised to see Luke with his hands on the girl's shoulders, posture protective. Reggie is glancing between them and Caleb uncertainly. That leaves Alex. Not the one he'd expect to manhandle anyone, much less to know what he's doing.

“What do you mean, that's not Nick?” Reggie asks.

At the same time, Alex says, “I can touch him. How can I touch him?” which only makes it all the more surprising that he'd tried in the first place.

“I don't know,” the girl says. “I don't know. But he doesn't talk like Nick. He doesn't move like Nick.”

“That's because he's possessed,” says the younger brother's voice from behind him, and then Caleb finds himself choking and gasping for the second time in two minutes as a bucket of water is abruptly upended over his head.

***

They've been arguing for half an hour over what to do with the spirit possessing Nick, and even after the events of recent weeks, that's a thought Julie finds hard to wrap her head around. The boys may be ghosts, but they've never possessed anyone. Possession is the realm of horror movies and Bible stories, and even though she knows he's securely tied to a chair and gagged to keep him from shouting, she has to glance over at the person who decidedly is not Nick every few minutes to make sure he hasn't...crab-walked into a corner on the ceiling, maybe. She isn't entirely sure what she's afraid he might do, just that now that the adrenaline's worn off, she's shaky and terrified and entirely out of her depth.

Luke's arm tightens around her shoulder as she glances over at Nick again. “We've got your back,” he promises.

“Always,” Alex agrees.

“I still think the holy water thing's promising,” Reggie says, sounding almost excited.

“I already did holy water,” Carlos protests. He's steadfastly refused to be banished from the studio after racing in with a bucket to try to save her; it had taken Alex pulling her aside to suggest quietly that it's better to keep him where they can keep an eye on him than exile him and leave him to his own devices before she stopped arguing.

“You dunked a crucifix in a bucket. That's not the same thing!”

“It works on TV!”

“We can't exactly walk into a church and ask to fill a squirt gun with holy water,” Alex points out.

“I guess,” Reggie says reluctantly, and crowds in to peer over Carlos's shoulder at his tablet.

***

Several rounds of argument and one raid on a grocery store later, they stand at the points of the compass around a circle of salt surrounding the bound Nick, the air reeking of burning sage – Julie's fairly certain it's not supposed to still be green when they burn it, but it's the best they could find on short notice. She is, she decides, sorely lacking in witchy friends, and maybe she'll need to rectify that soon. The band has never done anything to threaten her, but apparently there are ghosts out there who do mean harm, and it would be good to have someone around who knows a little more about them than Alex had managed to glean from his friend.

Carlos sits nearby, watching them critically. He'd finally agreed to sit out the attempt at exorcism when they – well, when Alex and Reggie – convinced him that the band's bond would make them stronger, and there were only four compass points anyway. And when they allowed him to set the circle.

Julie draws a deep breath, and forcing her voice not to waver, says, “I call upon the Watchtower of the North. By the power of Earth, I cast you out. Leave this body, and trouble us no more.”

“I call upon the Watchtower of the East,” Alex says. Nick thrashes in his bonds, glaring. “By the power of Air, I cast you out. Leave this body, and trouble us no more.”

Luke's voice rings clear on his heels, “I call upon the Watchtower of the South. By the power of Fire, I cast you out. Leave this body, and trouble us no more.”

Reggie chimes in, “I call upon the Watchtower of the West. By the power of Water, I cast you out. Leave this body, and trouble us no more.”

They repeat, faster and faster, and it isn't music, but it has its own rhythm and they find it naturally as breathing. Nick struggles against his bonds, and against the tension building between them. On the seventh repetition, his body arches, straining, and thick purple smoke pours from his eyes and his mouth, seeping out around his gag. He slumps, senseless, and a man's form congeals from the smoke, hovering above them, expression set in a look of disdain that poorly masks his unease.

“Caleb,” Luke snarls, jaw working, hands balling into fists. Julie's breath catches as she takes the man in – the spirit who had trapped her band, her friends, and nearly destroyed them entirely.

“Get out,” she says, and is shocked to find her voice level.

“Don't be foolish,” the man – Caleb – says. “You're a powerful necromancer, but you're just a child. You've stumbled into binding these three to you out of sentiment, true, but just imagine what you could do on purpose. All you need is someone to teach you.”

“Teach me to enslave people's souls?” Julie snaps.

“'Enslave' is such a nasty word. It's not as though they don't get anything out of it.”

“Nothing worth it,” Reggie mutters.

“I don't want to learn anything you have to teach me.” Julie glares at the hovering ghost. “Get out of my studio.”

“Are you sure?” Caleb smiles, the same too-polished smile she'd seen on Nick's face, and her stomach churns in revulsion. “I could help you find your mother. I could help you bring her back to you.”

She gasps, feeling as though she'd been punched in the stomach.

“Mom would kick your butt,” Carlos says, and she starts when she feels his hand grasp hers tightly. She hadn't been aware of his moving.

“Your opinion hardly matters,” Caleb says stiffly.

“It matters more than yours. You hurt my friends. You hurt so many people. Get out.”

There's an odd echo to her voice, and the world around her blurs. She thinks, for a moment, that it's tears, but Luke is staring at her in awe, and Alex, and Reggie all but squeaks, “You're glowing!”

Carlos rises up on tiptoes to whisper in her ear, and she repeats out loud, “I cast you out.”

“Wait!” There's a hint of panic in Caleb's voice now. “Don't do anything you'll regret.”

“I don't plan on it,” Julie says. “Caleb Covington, I cast you out. Leave this place, and return to your haunt.”

She feels a faint warmth in her shoulders, as though at the press of someone's hands.

“Caleb Covington, I cast you out,” she says again. “Leave this place, and return to your haunt.”

“You have no idea what you're casting aside,” Caleb protests.

Heat kindles in her chest, and she smells, very faintly, the aroma of flowers. Dahlias.

“Caleb Covington, I cast you out! Leave this place, return to your haunt, and never trouble the rest of Los Angeles again!”

There is a flash of light, rose and gold, and when it dissipates, only Nick remains in the circle, blinking groggily. “Wha--?” he begins.

***

The pressure is all but unbearable, and in the moment before his club resolves around him, Caleb is half-certain the girl has managed to banish him to whatever waits beyond. His office is cold, confining, and he throws the door open and strides past a few startled-looking ghosts who mill about, waiting for the evening's festivities to begin. He makes it as far as the door before the jolt hits him, crackling through his chest and leaving him breathless, though he has no need to breathe. He stares, incredulous, then tries again.

Another jolt tears through him.

Frantic, he checks his wrists, then pulls his shirt open, blinking in horror as he takes in the rose-and-gold mark of a dahlia fading slowly into his skin.


End file.
